My Lords, I rise to oppose Clause 57 and Schedule 26 and express my deep concern about the way in which the Government are pushing through local government reorganisation under the banner of devolution. Local government reorganisation is not new. It can and does happen but, where it does, it should happen by consent. Councils already have routes to propose mergers and restructuring where they believe it is right for their area.
What is different here is the scale and direction of travel. This feels rushed, top-down and imposed. It runs directly counter to the notion of devolution and the stated purpose of this Bill. I do not accept that the creation of new strategic authorities requires, as some kind of quid pro quo, the rapid abolition or forced merger of existing authorities. One size does not fit all. I have some experience of unitary authorities and recognise that they can work well, but that does not justify imposing them everywhere regardless of local circumstances, identity or consent.
Crucially, there is no strong evidence to support the argument that these changes will save money or improve service delivery. Larger councils are not automatically cheaper or more efficient to run. At a time when local government is already under extreme financial pressure, it is extraordinary that Ministers are pursuing structural upheaval rather than addressing the underlying problem of chronic underfunding. Local authorities are still grappling with the consequences of austerity. Councils across the country face serious and growing funding gaps and services are already stretched to breaking point. Before imposing disruptive reorganisations, the Government should fix that.
There are also serious risks to community identity and representation. Evidence from councillors on the ground suggests that these proposals could result in arbitrarily drawn, very large authorities with little sense of place or shared identity. Many towns with long histories and strong civic cultures—places that people care deeply about—are at risk of being effectively wiped off the local government map. It is important because democracy is about not just administrative efficiency but connection, accountability and trust. There is clear evidence that size matters for democratic engagement. Increasing population size and geographic scale risks reducing electoral turnout and lowering participation in local decision-making. We already have far too few elected representatives compared with many comparable countries. These proposals will significantly reduce the number of councillors overall, further thinning out representation at precisely the moment when communities are facing increasing pressures and greater complexity.
I am particularly concerned about the impact on casework and local advice. Councillors play a vital role as accessible, familiar faces in their communities, helping people navigate failing systems, resolve problems and get support in times of crisis. Many already work far beyond what their allowances reflect, often with limited support. When I was a councillor in Southwark, I could not do any gardening in my front garden because people would come up to me and tell me about their awful problems with black mould—clearly more important than my daffodils—so going into my garden was sometimes a challenge.
My Lords, my Amendment 196EC to Schedule 26 fairly sets out some of my concerns, which, having listened to the noble Baroness, I am sure are shared by others in the Room. I tabled it in part to probe how Ministers will determine the new pattern of unitary councils. I appreciate that, by and large, they will be shaped by the submissions being made by current local authorities to the department, but my concern is that there is little thought or discussion about the size, shape or culture of the new councils.
The Government’s White Paper, published in December 2024, was clear that unitary councils should have
“a population of 500,000 or more”.
It argued that this would be
“the right size to achieve efficiencies, improve capacity and withstand financial shocks”.
The White Paper also said that
“reorganisation should not delay devolution and plans for both should be complementary”.
The Government have sensibly delayed the election of a number of the combined mayoral authorities and slowed the process down. Until the last general election, the pace of devolution was rather more measured, which was wise. Understandably, the new Government want to get a move on with their major reforms. At the same time, we will be asking the combined mayoral authorities and the new unitary councils to deliver much of the Government’s growth agenda and their political priorities in education, housing, childcare, nursery provision and so on. Quite right, too: they are the vehicles for a lot of those things, in particular transport. But the idea that these new and very powerful institutions will be capable of delivering new policies and plans while simultaneously creating themselves is something of a stretch. When Brighton and Hove City Council was set up back in 1997, we wisely gave ourselves two and a half years of preparation, including one year as a shadow authority. None of these structures will have that luxury.
My Lords, I add my voice in support of the noble Lord, Lord Bassam. Everything he said makes a great deal of sense. It is hugely important to consider the identity of the authorities being created in terms of their communities and place-making. I am also tempted to support the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, in her opposition to Clause 57 standing part, because it makes no sense to introduce this additional tier of local government at the same time as supposedly simplifying it by reducing two tiers to a single tier. To do this at the same time is likely to result in more costs, endless local government arguments and unhappiness.
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I do not agree that it makes sense to split my own county of Hertfordshire into two, three or four unitaries any more than it would have done to split Buckinghamshire, Wiltshire or Dorset. I know that they all have one or two additional bits that are unitaries but, basically, the historic counties—and the sense of place and identity that their inhabitants feel towards them—have survived. In the case of Hertfordshire, this will not result in any savings. According to my research, many of the councillors who support the splitting of the county into at least two unitaries do not believe that there will, in fact, be any savings. In Hertfordshire’s case, it is likely to lead to years of internal dissent and argument, with a highly damaging effect on people’s sense of identity. I certainly support the amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, and the clause stand part notice in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett.
My Lords, uncharacteristically, I support the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, and the noble Lord, Lord Bassam.
Clause 57 and Schedule 26 should play no part in the Bill because the claim that larger units of local government are more cost-effective has been thoroughly debunked. We will just end up with larger, more expensive units that deny the pattern of life that people live. The 500,000 argument was comprehensively debunked by the Blair Government in 2006 with a seminal document that is still available on their website. More recently, the claim that this current round of unitisation will save money was initially made by the County Councils Network, citing evidence dating from 2020. Last year, the people who wrote the report said, “Actually, we made a mistake and there are no more savings to be had”. The savings that were promulgated in 2020 had already been made.
Bigger is no longer better. A forced reorganisation across the entirety of this country is likely to crystallise at least £1 billion-worth of unaccounted for pension strain costs for those who would be entitled to retire on a full pension up to 10 years early, having been forced out on grounds of efficiency. There is special meaning to those words. However, those billion pounds or so have not been taken into account, and it is local people who will pick up the tab. Through the Bill, we will end up with more expensive additional layers to have mayors who can raise taxes on things for which they are not even responsible.
I do not intend to relitigate the arguments I made on Monday, but there is no clarity on where the new town and parish councils will sit. This is unfinished business that we will need to revisit on Report. We must ask: is there even capacity in national government, let alone local government, for this reorganisation at a time when councils should be in the van of building homes, growing the economy and picking up the pieces for those who have fallen on hard times?
My Lords, I feel bound to remind the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, that the Bill is a Labour continuation of a local government reorganisation started under the Conservatives. This is very much the Michael Gove—now the noble Lord, Lord Gove—view of how England should be governed, with mayors as the key element and large units imposed regardless of place.
I have done my politics in Yorkshire over the years. I think the imposition of a single unitary council, against the preferences of almost all local authority members in North Yorkshire—except York, because York was, by and large, a contest between Liberal Democrats and Labour—was a crucial example of ignoring place-making in everything else.
When I do my politics in Bradford, I am conscious that it is a large unitary authority and I see good councillors struggling to represent their wards, and councillors who are not so good leaving their wards pretty much unrepresented. I support very strongly everything that the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, said about the importance of place, and of recognising that different areas require different patterns. I also regret the tendency of successive Governments to go in for restructuring when they are not sure what else to do, the unlikelihood that this will lead to better government and, sadly, the likelihood that it will leave more people across England feeling unrepresented and ignored.
I was very struck by a letter I saw this morning from the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Fire Safety, Building and Democracy. That seems to me to place the importance given to democracy in the appropriate place according to the Bill. This is supposed to be a democratic Government and a democratic country. All politics is local. The figures on public trust that I see every year show that the public trust Westminster less than they trust local government. Weakening local government is a very bad idea but, unfortunately, that is what the Bill is all about.
My Lords, size really does matter. Big is not necessarily beautiful. I am a practitioner, as many know, looking up the telescope from place-making projects we are working on across the country, I declare my interest as such. I am a voice, I suppose, from the charitable and voluntary sector and the social enterprise sector. As I said, I am looking up the telescope into these impenetrable large structures, trying to deliver place-making projects on the ground.
My experience over many years and today confirms what the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, is saying: he is correct and we need to be very careful about these matters. My colleagues and I have been working with one county council leader on place-making projects for the past eight years within a large structure. He is an excellent, capable leader, but it was virtually impossible, even with his support, to get this beast to dance to an innovation tune on place-making in his county. It was like swimming through treacle, even though all the politics was in the right place to do it. I found that this structure was too large to have any sense of place or to have any relationships with people on the ground, where it really matters. If future place-making is about bringing people together, people and relationships are crucial.
In practice, this restructuring is already halting many place-making projects in challenging communities in the north of England, as staff look for new jobs. My colleagues and I see and experience it every day. The Government have a right to restructure, but they need to listen very carefully to the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, and those of us working on the ground: the practical details really matter.
The country is in danger of coming to a halt. We need to get interested in practice on the ground and what works in detail. At the moment, practitioners feel ignored. We want to help, but there needs to be a dialogue and real interest in what works on the ground in local communities.
My Lords, I thank all those who have spoken, in particular my noble friend Lord Wallace of Saltaire, who made a number of important points about all three of the suggestions before us. I thought the point from the noble Lord, Lord Mawson, was extremely well made: this is about place-making and what happens on the ground. A top-down approach is building the other way around.
I will be very brief. This is a devolution Bill, yet it prescribes what can happen on the ground. I have said that at least half a dozen times in Committee, but I will repeat it again because it deserves to be repeated. I want to give the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, some extra support, because there is an issue with size, as the noble Lord, Lord Mawson, pointed out.
I understand that we have an appropriate figure for the size of a unitary authority of some 500,000, but I counsel the Government against using population size as the basis for a calculation. I can remember, a few years ago, when the Minister was the noble Lord, Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth, having a conversation about the ideal size for Buckinghamshire and Bournemouth in Dorset. I remember being told that, in Buckinghamshire, the ideal size needed to be 350,000, but I was urging a figure of around 300,000. I am quite happy to be wrong about that but, if the Government are moving towards a figure of 500,000, they will have to justify it. The noble Lord, Lord Bassam, rightly made the point that you need to consider natural geography, the identity of the authorities and so on. He put it extremely well.
I hope that the Minister will tell us that the Government will consider the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Bassam. I am sure the noble Lord would not mind them adding to it and improving it with new things, but it should form the basis for a consideration of what the ideal unitary size is, which may of course be different in different places. It is for local people to say whether they prefer a model of 500,000, fewer than that or whatever; otherwise, this process will be too top-down.
My Lords, I will be brief in closing, but very clear about the position of the Official Opposition on this group. After many hours of debate, one point should now be beyond doubt: devolution cannot be delivered by compulsion. If the Government persist in reserving sweeping powers to direct and impose local government reorganisation from the centre, the Bill will continue to fall very short of its stated purpose.
We have heard many views, mostly negative, from noble Lords today, but I have been there. In 2007, under a Labour Government, I took my then council to a unitary. I was not very popular, but it was our decision: we planned it and we asked for it. It has been a great success; it is more efficient and more local. I will talk more about that in future groups today.
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The amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, offers a measured and entirely reasonable corrective. It would neither frustrate reform nor tie the Government’s hands. It simply requires Ministers to demonstrate that they have considered the real-world consequences of their decisions for place, for democracy and for financial and environmental sustainability, before issuing an invitation or, dare I say it, a direction. There is one point that we wish to add: it is important that local people are listened to, not just councils or councillors.
The House of Lords has now raised these concerns repeatedly. At Second Reading and throughout Committee, we have been patient, but we cannot continue to pass legislation on trust alone, particularly where it reshapes local democracy. If the Government are serious about devolution, they should have no objection to placing basic safeguards in the Bill. If they are confident that these powers will be used responsibly, transparency and restraint should be welcomed, not resisted. This is a moment for clarity: either the Bill reflects consent, local identity and democratic sustainability, or it does not. I look forward to hearing assurances from the Minister on these important issues.
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, and my noble friend Lord Bassam of Brighton for addressing the local government reorganisation measures in the Bill. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, for speaking on behalf of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett.
The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, opposes Clause 57 and Schedule 26 standing part of the Bill. Reorganisation is a crucial part of the Government’s mission to fix the foundations of local government, creating unitary councils that can be sustainable for the future and deliver the high-quality services that all residents deserve. The Bill amends the existing legislation to enable the Secretary of State to direct areas to submit proposals to reorganise.
We are committed to working in partnership with local areas and are already doing so on this current round of reorganisation. All two-tier areas that were invited in February 2025 have now submitted proposals for reorganisation, which have either been consulted on or are now subject to consultation, because they acknowledge that the status quo is not feasible or sustainable. Therefore, this power would only ever be used in the future, where areas had failed to make progress following an invitation.
The new merging provisions enable existing unitary councils that believe structural change will be beneficial to submit proposals for reorganisation. This aligns the process for reorganising single-tier areas with the current process for reorganising two-tier areas. With devolution and local government reorganisation progressing concurrently across the country, mechanisms are needed to ensure that these reforms work in harmony.
The ability to convert a combined county authority into a combined authority is a common-sense and necessary measure. Without it, there would be no streamlined route to ensure that the existing combined and combined county authorities remain intact once their constituent authorities implement reorganisation. The ability to abolish a combined authority or a combined county authority could be used only in very limited situations. It ensures that, if a reorganisation proposal would render a strategic authority obsolete, the proposal can be implemented and the strategic authority abolished as necessary. Any such proposal requiring the use of the abolition power would need to consider how it would impact future devolution in the area, as the Government’s reorganisation criteria set out. This ensures that these areas will not be left without a viable pathway to devolution.
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Schedule 26 risks abolishing whole tiers of representation almost overnight. That will inevitably lead to spikes in casework and confusion about where people turn for help. Local advice centres are already under immense strain, having lost staff and volunteers, while demand continues to rise. I see no evidence that the Government have seriously considered how this reorganisation will affect advice provision or where that additional pressure will land.
I do not agree that having services under one roof will make things simpler for residents. It might sound true in principle, but transitions of this scale are not frictionless. Removing thousands of local representatives at once is a disruption, and disruption without consent carries real democratic costs. Schedule 26 concentrates power in the hands of the Secretary of State, allowing directions to be issued, boundaries to be changed and authorities to be abolished with little or no local say. For all these reasons, I believe that Clause 57 and Schedule 26 represent a huge step in the wrong direction.
It is well known that I favour unitary councils and have long argued for them, but they have to be well grounded to work and, to be well grounded, they have to be based on recognisable boundaries that have a clear relationship with local geography and a sense of community. My authority, Brighton and Hove, is constrained by the downs and, for that matter, it makes sense. It is a place, and place-making, as the Government say clearly in the White Paper, is of great importance not just to government but, more importantly, to communities. Make the unitaries too big and start tying urban and rural districts together and you lose that. You also lose the sense of community identity.
In the past, when unitary authorities were established, many place names were lost. I go back to 1974: who knew that Sefton was Southport and Bootle, or that Kirklees subsumed places such as Huddersfield, Dewsbury and Batley? Kirklees is the name of a hall on an estate, some of which is, I think, in the neighbouring borough of Calderdale. My point here is that place-making and community building, which are surely part of the stuff of local government, rely on the ability to be readily identified so that people can understand who is responsible for what and in whose name. Abolishing a lot of the place names, as the last local government review did in 1974, risks depriving people of that ready point of identity, which would be unfortunate and wrong.
Currently, looking at the size of authorities, we have few that fit the 500,000-plus margin—just nine: Birmingham, Cornwall, Leeds, Sheffield, Bradford, Manchester, County Durham, Wiltshire and Buckinghamshire. It is an open question as to whether their size makes them more efficient; it is possible that it makes them more remote. The more remote they are, the more citizens feel left behind and left out, and less engaged and able to influence local decision-making.
For that reason, my amendment seeks to ensure that, in making a direction on the future pattern of local councils in a given area, the Secretary of State must have regard to local geography, because of its influence on travel and community relations; the sense of identity that the new authorities will take on in terms of places and communities; and whether it is wise simply to glue together urban and rural areas for administrative convenience. Additionally, the environmental and financial sustainability of a council area, and its proposed size, have to be considered.
The White Paper seemed to assume the bigger the better and that savings would flow. I am less convinced. If I look back to the unitarisation of Berkshire in 1998, for example, when the council was broken up into six unitaries, all then had to find directors of social services, education, environment and highways. A similar impact will be felt with the unitarisation that takes place under combined mayoral authorities.
I suspect most councils have stripped out excessive costs over the past 15 years and most will have come from back-office mergers. There may be savings in the administration of council tax as larger council tax areas come into view, but the integration of many district council systems into new unitary council tax collections will certainly come at a cost.
To conclude, I have a number of questions for the Minister. Can she confirm that a fixed size for unitaries—the 500,000 figure—has been dropped? Do the Government have a number in mind? Will the Secretary of State be mindful of ensuring that mergers respect the need to have identifiable boundaries that respect urban and rural differences and the historical bases of councils, to enable place-making and help with community resilience? Can we be assured that resources will be in place to ensure a seamless transition from the current pattern of districts into larger unitaries?
What steps will the Government take to guarantee a level of democracy that makes councils accessible to local electors and residents? The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, made the point that councillors already work hard. The White Paper confirmed that the number of councillors would reduce—that is pretty obvious, really—but can we be assured that councillors will be sufficient in number, and well enough resourced and supported, to represent the inevitably larger communities that they will be part of?
I do not oppose unitaries; in fact, I am rather keen on them. I do not oppose devolution, but it has to be done at a pace, and in a style and manner, that works for local communities to ensure that democracy, demography and community identity are preserved, because place-making should be at the heart of the changes. We all need to be assured that that will be the case.
I ought to alight for a moment on the consequences of council tax equalisation in a territory, none of which has been considered at all. I am a veteran of several rounds of local government reorganisation over many years. In the Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Act 2007, there were some statutory tests, including on value for money, equity between areas and consistency of electoral quotient. There needs to be a broad cross-section of support, but none of this is included in the Bill. The requirement for consent has been abandoned—this is something that is going to be done to people.
Last night I was at a dinner in London and people told me how, 20 years ago, they travelled from all parts of the country to go to Norwich to celebrate their octocentenary; it was 800 years. Among them were lord mayors, honorary aldermen, the sheriffs and the reeves. The Bill is silent on how this important civic part of our nation is to be treated. In an unthinking reorganisation, the civic life of our nation will be vandalised. In future, there will be no more trips to Norwich, or anywhere else for that matter, for those people who are part of the social grease of the way our nation works.
I have heard it said that this will make local government simpler and more straightforward. As we have learned over many days in Committee, however, it will cost more, there will be plenty more expensive layers and there will be more complication. Last week we discovered for the first time that, among the 40 fire authorities in this country, there will be 10 different structural arrangements. What a missed opportunity this is. Rather than reorganising the deckchairs in local government, perhaps we could do something about simplification. But no: there will be less accountability and it will be more impenetrable.
Ultimately, families, businesses and the economy outside the M25 will suffer while London and the mets get to sit this one out. There is no equity there at all. People will be paying more for less, having powers taken further away from them. Nobody wants it.
The noble Baroness mentioned the Government’s approach to funding. This week we publish the local government finance settlement, which has restructured local government funding to ensure that the areas that need it get the most funding. We have put more than £5.6 billion of new grant funding over the next three years into local government. We know that unitarisation can unlock significant savings. Unitary councils reduce duplication, cut waste, improve services and give better value. Of course, exact savings from each proposal will vary from place to place, depending on the proposals implemented.
The noble Baroness also mentioned casework. I take her point and I know the bit about growing daffodils out in the garden—I still often get stopped when I am doing my garden and I am not even a councillor now. Casework support varies from council to council, but it is perfectly possible to provide support for casework at any level of local government. I know that many councils do this extremely well—I hope that those that are not so good will learn from the best.
I turn to Amendment 196EC, tabled by my noble friend Lord Bassam. I shall correct myself, because I did not thank all noble Lords who spoke in the debate, as I should have done at the beginning, so my apologies. My noble friend’s amendment seeks to introduce criteria that the Secretary of State must consider when taking a decision on the merger of existing unitary councils. The new merging provisions set out in this Bill enable existing unitary councils that believe structural change will be beneficial to submit proposals for reorganisation. This aligns the process for reorganising single-tier areas with the current process for reorganising two-tier areas.
I reassure my noble friend that having regard to the size, geography, public services and local identity of an area is already embedded in our approach and decision-making when it comes to reorganisation. This is demonstrated by the statutory guidance that we have issued to areas that have been invited to prepare proposals for local government reorganisation.
My noble friend mentioned the size of areas. I point out that the invitation letter to two-tier areas in February made it very clear that the aim for new councils to have a population of 500,000 or more is a guiding principle. Instead of presenting a top-down solution for each area, our starting point is to support and empower local leaders and respect their knowledge, expertise and insight. This approach is in line with the new partnership between government and local government. In discussions with individual councils, with parliamentarians and in interviews given throughout the process, the Government have further reinforced that position to aid the local discussions. I have seen a huge variation in the proposals that have come forward in terms of size. People have taken that as guidance and taken it very seriously. Yesterday, we had a debate on the new authority that has been set up, Cumbria, which has a population of much less than 500,000, because that was appropriate for that area.
Furthermore, the Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Act 2007 already requires that the Secretary of State may invite or direct a relevant principal authority to make a proposal for the merger of single tiers of local government only where it would be in
“the interests of effective and convenient local government”.
The 2007 Act also requires that affected local areas must be consulted before a proposal for local government reorganisation can be implemented. This gives local residents the opportunity to voice their opinions on the criteria outlined by the noble Lord in his amendment.
Next to my council is a council called North Hertfordshire, which includes four towns. The noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard, will know these towns very well—Hitchin, Letchworth, Baldock and Royston. These places have not ceased to exist because their council is called North Herts. The noble Baroness mentioned Wiltshire, which I know she feels was greatly strengthened by the introduction of unitary government. Wiltshire has survived in spite of its unitary status and I am sure that Hertfordshire will equally survive long into the future, no matter what happens with local government.
My noble friend’s questions can all be answered by the criteria that local authorities have been asked to respond to as part of the invitation process, including issues of local identity and cultural and historic importance. Although I appreciate the spirit in which my noble friend has tabled this amendment, it is the Government’s view that placing further legislative conditions on the merger of unitary councils would be duplicative and unnecessary. For these reasons, I hope that noble Lords feel able not to press their amendments.